It may be that talking about Carnival now, just when hundreds of men are busy shining their armour and feeding their beards egg-protein for a grave and solemn mock-up in two weeks' time, is ill-timed and in bad taste.

I therefore plead recourse to three things. First, writing about an event should be less hemmed-in seasonally than the event itself. Second, global warming apparently means that spring feels like winter. Third, a colleague told me this week how she had the time of her life at Nadur 2009 which, according to her, was probably the best do in recent years.

Like most things 'national', the Valletta carnival is a disappointment. The faces we see on our screens every year tend to look vaguely bored. Given their eternal dispute (yes, another one) with the government over the 'Carnival village', the 'revellers' probably also do their best to look wronged and distressed, their 'sacrifices' unrecognised by an ungrateful State that persists in spending taxpayers' money on schools and such nonsense. The floats are staid and the dances over-choreographed, and both are almost invariably displeasing to the eye. In fact the whole thing's so dire I'm getting depressed writing about it.

Which is why we, like the thousands of Maltese who braved the car queues to the ferries, could do worse than cross the channel to Nadur, which has somehow developed its own genuine article. Perhaps the original prompt was the thrill of walking about disguised and unrecognisable in an island where the best way to remember what last week's row with your wife was about, is to ask a friend of a friend. Of your second cousin.

Be that as it may, the Nadur carnival has grown into a fantastic menagerie of the macabre, wit, and black humour. As such it attracts grown-ups - unlike the Valletta carnival, which is for children and ritual children also known as 'tourists'. The characters this year included a chap pushing his 'manhood' around in a wheelbarrow, 'nuns', 'priests', and the unmentionable that made it on all the papers.

The Bishop of Gozo was not amused, and we know the rest. The result was a fairly major scrum involving the courts, the media, politicians, and everyone else really. There was talk by 'conservatives' of 'overstepping the mark', 'the people's religion', and 'offence to public sentiment'. The 'liberals', on their part, screamed 'context', 'Church-State separation', and 'freedom to offend'. The two camps seemed very distant and irreconcilable, and yet there was a consensus on one thing: what happened after Nadur 2009 was very much a case of bishop vs carnival.

I beg to differ. The point was made that the bishop and his loyal vassals failed to understand the context. Carnival is meant to be subversive, we were told, and so it was. This in fact is the key to the argument. As I see it, not only were the Bishop and Conservative Co. in line with the spirit of the event, they were actually part of the script. The logic is simple. If carnival is to be subversive, it needs something to subvert. A good carnival needs an angry bishop.

Joseph Cassar Pullicino documents how, during the time of the Order, a delegation of 'peasants' would wake the Grandmaster early on the morning of the carnival and ask permission for the event. The attraction of carnival is the paradoxical nature of the whole setup, in which established power, justice, and social norms are temporarily and ritually suspended in favour of relative anarchy. The actual monarch fixes a duration for the reign of the anti-monarch, King Carnival. It is a prescriptively short reign, at the end of which the anti-monarch is destroyed (usually burned).

Carnival therefore serves both to subvert and to reinforce power structures. It is at the same time organised and chaotic, prescribed by the State and outside of it. The crucial point is that the two sides of the equation are equally important. In other words, that it ultimately takes a real monarch - or, in the case of Gozo, a real bishop - to make a carnival.

Seen in this light, what happened in and after Nadur this year was a carnival purist's dream come true. The revellers sought to provoke the bishop by subverting his power field (although their intentions are not known). The prelate, on his part, obliged and played the part by doing what bishops are expected to do, i.e. condemn carnivals (although his intentions are equally undeclared).

It was almost too good to be true. The bishop, the State, and the people joined hands to make Nadur 2009 a truly memorable, and authentic carnival. No wonder my colleague was so taken.

Word has been going round that mischievous souls plan to defy the conservatives by ensuring an influx of nuns and risen Christs at Nadur 2010. I'm not sure I agree - the law is the law, after all. A better idea would be to wake the Bishop of Gozo early on Saturday morning and ask him permission to hold the carnival. My guess is that he would go along. The Grandmasters were no fools, and the bishop knows his history.

mafalzon@hotmail.com